Watch Isaiah Rashad’s Tiny Desk Concert [Video]

Isaiah Rashad brings songs from across his catalog and six cuts from It’s Been Awful to NPR’s 13-song Tiny Desk Concert.

Isaiah Rashad opens his Tiny Desk with “Heavenly Father” and closes 12 songs later with “Prayers Up,” using the desk to pull more than a decade of music into one continuous set rather than simply running through his newest material.

The 13-song performance reaches back to Cilvia Demo with “Heavenly Father” and “West Savannah,” touches The Sun’s Tirade through “Wat’s Wrong” and “4r Da Squaw,” and brings in “Headshots (4r Da Locals)” and “RIP Young” from The House Is Burning. Its center of gravity, though, is It’s Been Awful: “SAME SH!T,” “BOY IN RED,” “M.O.M.,” “SUPAFICIAL,” “SCARED 2 LOOK DOWN,” and “GTKY” all make the cut, connecting Rashad’s current chapter with the records that brought him here.

Guitar, keys, bass, drums, saxophone, trumpet, and two background vocalists reshape that material around Rashad’s loose melodic phrasing rather than trying to reproduce the studio versions exactly. The final slot is particularly notable: “Prayers Up” is absent from his official DSP catalog but has been surfacing in his recent live sets, giving the career-spanning performance one piece that still sits outside the albums represented before it.